Misty Acre and The Water Heater

Misty Acre

My dad gave us this house in the hopes that it would save us money.  We were living in an apartment that the landlord was raising our rent by $50.00 once a month and it had been 3 months and we couldn't afford anything else at the time. The carpet was bad and the dishwasher broke down and the landlord didn't fix it unless we bought the carpet ourselves....on top of the raise in our rent. So my daughter went to my parents, unbeknownst to us and told my dad about our problems and he wanted to give us this house. I wrote about that horrible experience earlier in this blog and don't want to re-hash all of that nonsense.

We moved in and we knew that some things needed upgraded to pass the new codes they had passed years ago.  We waited about a year and a half until we got our finances under control.  I was working for a company that did landscaping and other building projects.  They were out of state but they did come and take a look at the one pier that was holding up our house.  I am getting off the subject and will have to write a book about this house later.  Anyway they came out and raised the house on that corner and put a new pier under the house.  I will tell more about that when I get to telling the whole story of this house.

That was our first nice encounter with a contractor/employer.  Anyway, let me get back to the Water Heater.

We shopped around for a contractor to fix the house and bring all the plumbing and electrical work up to code.  My parents had this house as a cabin, but we needed to bring it up to something that we could live in all the time.  So we shopped around and got references and all that jazz.

Keeping to the story here, we had floods in the basement many times.  It was for my sewing business, that never happened here because of the locality of it.  Anyway, we had another contractor come and see where the flooding was coming from.  This was many months ago.  He looked it over and couldn't really find anywhere where the water was coming in.  We cleared out all the gutters and the big black plastic pipes that they put around the basement to catch and divert any waters from the basement.  They were dry.  We were confused.  It only flooded when it rained really hard.  So we had no idea where it was coming from.

Current water heater's place.

One day about 2 months ago, it hadn't rained in a week and was really dry.  My husband took the laundry basket down and found water in the basement.  It was about an inch and so the only thing down there was the water heater, the wash/dryer and the de-humidifier.  We knew it wasn't the washer because I hadn't used that in a week.  The only other thing that it has to have been was the Water Heater.

Easy enough to go to Lowes and get a new one and for them to come and install it and take this old one away.  I had a credit card with them and was going to use that.  So we go to the store and pick out one to replace the broken one.  No problem at all.

The plumber comes out and looks around and tells us that he cannot put it in.  WHAT!!!
He tells us the electrical wiring is not the right size and we will have to get an electrician to come out and put the correct wiring in.  Well, that sounded easy enough but I was fuming.  I blamed the country for changing the codes so many times....and they had....but that wasn't the problem.  I fumed some more.  I was hot and I could have made hot water from that point myself.

We went back the day the contractor brought all our new hot water tanks and fixings out to return it because we didn't have a place to store all that until we could get an electrician to come out.That was a fiasco.  The lady at the returns desk could not get the items off my credit card because it kept telling her that they were already returned.  All of us were dumbstruck.  So she said that she finally got them off and we went back home.  A week later I called to see if the charges were off my card and found that they weren't and was even charged for a missing payment.  I talked to the lady on the other end and she told me that she was going to make a report of it.  But my husband wantd it settled that day so we wnet back to Lowes to get it all straightened out.  That took about an hour and they even called their head office to get it straightened out.  The lady that was helping us could not understand why the store had it off their books, but it didn't come off my credit card.  She and the other person on the phone had talked for many minutes and finally they found the problem.  The store was using the wrong numbers on the items in question.  Finally my card has a zero balance again.  So I went and bought screws, nails and light bulbs and I forgo the Water Heater until we could get the electrician to come out and fix that problem.

From the time the water heater broke to the time that we could find an electrician it had been two weeks since we had hot water.  We braved ourselves and took cold showers and we heated water on the stove to wash dishes in.  Laundry didn't matter because I wash my clothes in cold water anyway.  The only good thing about all this is that it was still summer weather and a cold shower was welcoming.

After about a week of trying to find an electrician he finally came out and what he found was not good at all. He told us that the circuit breaker in the box was right but the wiring was wrong and that if we wanted a lower bill that we would have to clean up the crawlspace.  We always wanted to go down in the fine dust and dirt and fallen insulation to clean that all up.....NOT.  Well we did want to eventually, but right then.

Before we cleaned.  We stored stuff down there.
The insulation keeps falling because the
mountain keeps shifting.

It took us 2 days and 8 hours to clean it all up.  He came back out and what he found was a strange ay to do the electric wiring.  They did have the right wiring from the circuit breaker, but only to a junction box.  Let me tell you about that.  When we were putting in all the electric and the water heater there some 15 years ago, we wanted the water heater on the other side of the basement because it was closer to the sinks, dishwasher, toilet and shower.  The did not do as we told them to do and somehow it got put on the opposite side of the basement making it longer to heat the water.

Almost done cleaning.  We took the first set of shelves down
and will have them in another place, once this is all done.

BUT......the wiring was right and whoever (the
main contractor) decided to do the opposite and so someone must have put that junction box in and ran a lesser wire to the water heater.  The electrician at that time was working for our main contractor as a sub-contractor.  I fumed even more, but that saved us lots of money because this electrician had to only run the correct wire from the junction box to where we want the new water heater to go.

This is where we want the new Water Heater.

Now it has been another week and we still don't have a water heater.  We go back to Lowes to purchase a new one again, but now that we changed the placement of it they have to send out a plumber to get the dimensions and feasibility of it and what they would have to do to install it in it's rightful place...in the crawlspace near the sinks, dishwasher, toilet and shower.  Oh something else that I will have to ask the plumber too...why do we have to run the bathroom sink to get the shower to run....strange eh?  We a few years ago we had a whole house water softener put in that crawlspace and they had their own pressure valve on it.  The our neighbor was having many problems with his water coming in from the water company that the water company came an put another water pressure valve on our house.  I think this is the problem, that and they had told us that we used twice the amount of water in May and September and that we had the water leak, which we did not.  After 3 years of all this finally it was fixed.  Finally the neighbors got their water fixed too and all problems have stopped......except the pressure in our water to go out to the shower as it is the last one the line.

So the plumber told us that he would be here between 7 and 1 today.  I have a foreboding feeling that this is going to cost a lot of money....something that should have been done right in the first place 15 years ago.

5 weeks without a water heater.  It is getting really old and it has to be done before winter comes.

As much as my dad wanted to help us out with giving this house to us, it has become a money pit because of shady contractors and those who want to do shortcuts to help them and not the homeowners.  There is lots more to this house I now call "The Money Pit".

They guy from Lowes just came and left.  He took measurements and all that and is reporting to Lowes later today and Lowes will call us back in a few days.  This is ridiculous as to how long and how much trouble all this, rather simple project, has turned out to be.

What he told me was the Berkeley County has this new code that they have to have a expansion tank on top of the water heater.  I know that water expands when it is heated.  The older water heaters had a release valve on them for that purpose.  The plumber asked where that water was going to go.....well excuse me for being stupid but, that is why they have the drip pans and that is why you put a CPVC pipe from that release valve to the drip pan.  Just how many people currently, on the older water heaters, have such a thing as the expansion tank.....and how many of those old water heaters have exploded because of pressure when the fill up?  I would guess not many.  Our heater is 15 years old and never blew up or anything like that.. Their logic doesn't make any sense....at all.  Just more money.

See the release valve and the pipe going down the the pan.
We didn't get a drip pan, but that is where the extra water goes.

I will edit this as I get more information because we are in a holding pattern again.

UPDATE 9/30/2016
Got a call about that LOWES Water heater and said that it could only be a 38 gallon water heater. I said no problem. What a mess.! They are thinking that we are going to dig a hole to put the water heater is. He also said that the whole crawlspace need to be the same depth. What a joke! It can't be the same depth EVER! Our house is on a slope! He also said the whole side has to be the same depth, which it is where we are going to put it. We just need to widen the area about 6 inches, or maybe not because he said that the water heater is 24 inches wide. Well the area is 36 inches wide and is the whole length of the basement wall.. We are going to be buying the water heater and talking to them about it tomorrow evening.

Mystery solved and some good news and some bad news:

See The Door on the front of the huse on the left.
That corner under the lattice, that is no longer there, is
where the rain is coming under the crawlspace.

I was able to see where the flooding was coming from from this storm. Good News and Bad News though. We will still have to move the water heat, but not under the crawlspace. The water is running under the crawlspace from the front of the house where the water comes into the crawlspace and pooling right where we wanted the new water heater. There is a wide door that lifts up so that we can get to the water for the whole house. I have been leaving it open for the cats to go under there in the winter or when it rains. It is only running in on the one side where we also transplanted the Rose from and that has left an small hill with each rain. We are going to have to find a way to divert that small stream that the rain has left. We didn't have that prior to the snowmegaddon we had in January when we got 42 inches of snow in one day. The cats can still get in the other side, just not the side at the corner of the house. They will have to walk or run around the door to get into the other side.

Letter To A Friend

I have been corresponding with an old friend.  We were friends in Florida and then we lost touch and found each other again about 3-4 years ago.  I knew his whole family and when I got divorced and moved that is when we lost touch.  Since then we have been corresponding with each other almost on a monthly basis.

Don't get your mind in the gutter with all this.  My husband doesn't know really that much about him but he can and sometimes I read the letters that we send back and forth.  There is no love with this friend, but much friendship.  He is in prison now and is about to get out in less than a year now.  The last letter that I sent to him was an update of what has been going on in my life since his last letter which was a few months ago.  Life just happens too fast sometimes and I am sharing this letter with you so that you too can get a sense of just how fast life can get.  I will give another update at the end of this letter.

Here it is:

I am sorry that this is so late.  OMG things have been happening so fast and so much has happened since my last letter to you.  I can’t get a breath in.  Every time that I thought about writing you something else would come up.

First off we were dealing with Wells Fargo about our mortgage and all that.  That took days to fill out their forms and find everything for them.  I know where our financial status is now, but it was not smooth at all.  They tried to hurry us into sending all that paperwork in….like a day.  Then when Dennis took it all to work with him to fax it to their office, he went through all the paperwork and the things that we had to add to that and removed the pay stubs that I had in the pile.  I got so mad at him and we could not fax it to their office that day, the day that they wanted it.  Then, the fax number they gave us did not work, so they gave us another number and that too did not work.  Then they gave us yet a third number and that didn’t work wither.  He brought all the paperwork back home and I called HELLS FARGO to see if I could e-mail the scanned documents……..found out their office was closed that Friday, when we were trying to send stuff to them.  Not one person returned my call.  All their phones were down.  I took a look at the paperwork again and found that doing the loan modification would adversely affect our credit….like our credit is good right now at all.  So with all that, I decided to not go through their plan at all.  Talk about stress levels!  This was just the beginning….or middle if you count what happened with my mom and daughter’s that I will have little or no contact with.

Duke and Charlie 2011

Duke 2015

….and then my neighbor across the street had to put his dog down and so he asked us to bring Duke over to say his last goodbyes and be with Brutis for his last hours.  So as we were over there, there is a set of steps that go up to a doggy door to his porch.  There is like 4 or five.  Duke tries to go up them and doesn’t fall down them, but falls off of them.  Now he couldn’t walk back home and I know that was time.  That was a Saturday.  Monday I had to call Duke’s Vet and tell them that that I wanted to schedule him to be put down.  Now they know that Duke will not get into the car.  I tried to get him in it a couple of years ago and I got his front legs in and went to life his back behind in and he pulled his front legs right out of the car.  Well he rolled under the car….so getting him into the car to go anywhere was not an option.  They told me that when I could get him in the car that they would do it in their office.  Well we didn’t want to put him to sleep in someplace that was not home.  So I asked the receptionist if she had someone else that we could call and she gave us another Vet.  He did make arrangements with me for that Thursday afternoon.  Dave, those were the longest 4 days.  I also had t make arrangements with a pet crematory and they would pick him up and do the cremation and then bring him back.  When the other vet came to our house, he was an older man and very nice and we chatted for a feew until we all went inside to get Duke.  We told him what our Vet said and he couldn’t believe it.  We will be switching our other animals to him when we need another vet.  OK, now the financial part.  Our vet was going to charge us for that service and putting him down to the tune of $500.00!!!.  The vet that came out to put Duke down at home only charged us $70.00 and the cremation was $201.40.  That was money that was not in the budget, but I had to find it somewhere. 

Yay! My husband got a big check from his job that he is a Crisis worker for.  I got all the bills, including the mortgage caught up and was even able to pay the property taxes with………………  That was stressful for the both of us as those property taxes were due in 2 days.  So he had to go stand in line, a couple of them, for hours so that we would not have a penalty on them.  Well we found out that Hells Fargo finally set up an escrow account, after many YEARS they told us that they couldn’t do, and paid our house taxes.  Thing is, I didn’t get a receipt yet.  I have been too busy to call the tax office to get that.  I guess that is another thing on Dennis’s list to go there on the way home to get that.  After going through all this crap with them I see on Face Book news about the fraudulent activity going on with Wells Fargo and that they fired 5,300 employees for making fraudulent customer accounts to get the incentives for some kind of commission.  I have no idea how that is going to affect us yet.  It will, no doubt.

….and then I ordered a few things from Fingerhut, like new shoes for me because no store around here sells the kind that I like and an A/C for the bedroom and a soft drawer storage unit so that things will be off the floor and neat in the basement.  Well I got everything but my shoes and to file a report for that.  Funny that when the UPS guy came and I was told that the shoes would be in that shipment, he was a new driver.  I asked him if he had something else for me and he said, No.  So I went on-line and Fingerhut sent me an affidavit report that I needed to fill out and send back.  Well I sent it back to them and I waited a week and then I called them.  Come to find out they didn’t get that e-mail back. So I did one over the phone.  Their report stated that I did get my shoes, but I told them they must be sitting at the UPS center because I never got them.  I told the lady what I was told by the new UPS guy.  Two days later I get a notice that they shipped me another pair of shoes and that I should be getting them within a week.  We shall see.

…….And then my coffee machine decided that it was going to have all the coffee go outside of the filter and clog it all up making all the coffee over fill onto the counter and floor.  I did manage to get one cup in a cup though.  Stress level is so high right now that I think I am going to explode!  Seriously, explode!

.….but that isn’t the end of it by any means……..Well our basement has flooded several times now and we always thought it was from those hard rains……well our basement flooded a few days ago and it had not rained in a week or more.  We deducted that it was the Hot Water Heater.  We went to LOWES to get a new one…..and they changed all the codes here in this friggen country.  We got a new o0ne some 15 years ago when we started renovating this house……..I was so pissed, but we ordered everything that we needed and also had them come out and install it.  No big deal right……………………?

……..and then, the installers get here and we find that they will not install it because there is something wrong with the electric from the box to the Hot Water Tank and it isn’t enough voltage.  They walk out and so we are left hanging because I have no money for this.  I try to call LOWES to get the charges off of my card.  I was put on hold by 3 different departments.  So we had to go there and do it……..but Dennis is on-call and gets a call on our way there.  Hell, Dave we didn’t even make it out of our neighborhood.  Stress Level just went through the roof!!!  We did manage to get there and the bill taken care of, but…..there is an extra charge to my account and I am NOT going t pay for it.  The installer did NOTHING.  On Tuesday I will have to call Lowes and get my card straightened out.  I really hate doing all this.  People tell me that I am a “know-it-all”.  Well I do know a lot because I ask questions, do research and follow up.  I wish that I could just trust people to do the right thing.  I really don’t want to know it all.  I think my brain is going to explode with all this information.  Grrrr.

The installer didn’t even find it to shut off the Water Heater or turn the breaker off, so we were asking LOWES how to do it ourselves and he was kind enough to tell us how to shut off the water.  Dennis tried to do it and could not get the knobs to turn.  Meanwhile our basement is flooded by all the water that leaked out of the Hot Water Tank.  What a mess my basement is!

……and then Charlie’s depression really kicks in and he was up all night last night crying and all day the next day and will not leave my side.  Every time that I sit down on the chair in the living room he has to sit in my lap.  He has to lay right up next to my head in the bed too.  Poor baby.  He and Duke were best buddies….oh and we now have fleas in the house, from Duke.  When his body died, the fleas all hopped off of that free feeding source.  We had to find money to get flea collars then, but they didn’t work the first 24 hours like they had the last time.  So…….so…..so…I am tired of someone playing games with me and torturing me and poking me to slowly bleed me dry.  I had a couple of nightmares the other night.  It reflected how I feel about our finances. 

I was being held hostage in someone’s apartment.  There were two guys that were dark skinned, like India.  They kept poking me with sharp objects that would make me bleed. Next thing that I knew I was laying in a wheel barrow full of broken glass and every move that I made would cut me and make me bleed….a slow bleed.  Next thing that I remember is that I made it to a neighbor’s apartment and I was still in that wheel barrow.  I was trying to get the black woman to help me and the guys came to the open door of her apartment looking for me and told her that I was just making things up and not to believe me.  That was the end of the dream. 

….and then…….I was on-top of my finances and now have to find an electrician to fix the electrical wiring in this house.  Oh I did my research and the county has changed those laws 5 times in 7 years.  I have no money and our credit cards are under the maxed out limit now and I was paying them off slowly, but doing that.  Oh and I forgot that the Student Loan that my husband has was in deferment, but just came back into our budget again.  That is over $100.00 a month now.  With all this and the raise in taxes for income that we just noticed on his paycheck, (another story that we have no explanation for yet) we have no choice bu to put this work on the credit cards. I can’t control anything, nothing, nada.

….and then the last dream that I had ………I was at my wedding, don’t know who any of the other people in it are.  We were sitting down to the dinner reception.  We all go out into the front of the church.  It was a big and beautiful church with a winding staircase.  The guests were making their way outside.  There were three pastors with us.  The honeymoon came up in the conversation and I was scared to be with my new husband and he was a bit on the aggressive side about the consummating.  The pastors were talking to me and I pulled one aside to talk to him.  I had told him that I was raped.  He understood my hesitation.  The guy that I married was tall, dark and he had a pear-shaped body, only he wasn’t fat. He brought my new husband in and we all talked and discussed this problem.  My new husband agreed that he would be gentle and I agreed that I would try it and not let my fear take over.  We were in agreement.  We worked it out.  That was the end of that dream. 

I am thinking that things are going to work out somehow.  All this in a couple of weeks and I hope it all stops and gets better……..nah….we still have to pay Home Owners Dues and taxes for next year…..but those bridges will be crossed another day.  Oh which reminds me……They are taking more taxes and SS and all that out of my husband's paycheck.  We were not told of this and it really crunched my budget yet again.  He did not get a raise, so we are perplexed.  That takes about $150.00 per paycheck from paying our bills.  My husband is working three jobs and the taxman and the debtors don’t give us a break.  

Meanwhile, I am finally getting noticed and have sold 9 products from my store!  It is slow and I realize this.  We don’t get paid until the threshold is met, which is much lower than all the content writing sites, that I stay away from now.  I will be able to cash out at $50.00 instead of $100.00.  They do hold payment for 30 days though because this company has a 30 day money back guarantee and instead of paying us and the product being returned they just hold it.  That makes a lot of sense.  I don’t want to spend that money and then have to find a way to return it if the customer is not satisfied. You can visit my store and you can share it too.  It is Lady_G_Boutique

….and then, and then, and then…..there is a song if you heard it called “Along Came John (Jones)” that all this is about and I posted some of this on Face Book and someone commented back about all this and this is what I commented back….and along came Ray (that is his name and we are friends)….he commented back, and I get a good laugh every time that I remember this)…..he said that I was a “smartass”.  LOL LOL LOL  I posted the youtube of the song and he got a laugh out of it too and said that he holds to his comment….that he still thinks that I am a smartass.

Updates:  

• Wells Fargo finally got the message that we were no longer interested in their plan. We got a letter and it mentioned about a Foreclosure and I went ballistic on the voicemail to the guy that was handling our case.  Wells Fargo is in deep trouble and is being brought up on all kinds of charges.
• I finally got my shoes from Fingerhut!!
• We had to find an electrician to run the correct line from the breaker box to the place that the new water heater is to be installed.  We changed the place and need to inform the plumber of where we want to put it.  Nobody wants to go down into our crawlspace.  On said that they were afraid to go down there because of spiders and such.  For goodness sakes I have been down there and crawling around many time.  What wimps.  At any rate, he said that if we cleaned up down there that he may drop the charges from $400.00.  We have one side done completely and the other side is about 80% done.  The insulation keeps falling because we live on a mountain that moves a lot. No matter how my parents tried to get it to stay up, it only lasted for a few years.  Stapling it doesn't hold as we have found out too.  I got an idea that might work and allow some flexibility of holding it up....Bungee cords.  We will see after all this fiasco of putting in a new Hot Water Tank.

Picture of before and almost after the crawlspace being cleared out

 The far side is what is left to clean. There are a couple more large boards leaning against the far wall.  I have to lay on my back or something to pull them out.  I cannot get to the top so my husband will have to get the rake and rake it out. He is also going to stuff the insulation back up.  I hope it stays up there for a while, at least until the electrician is finished his work.  We are taking down and moving those utility shelves and the new water heater will go on the other side of the water softener that you see on the top picture close to the door.

So there you have it.  The fun never stops around here.